DOCSLIB.ORG

Marginal Utility & Its Diminishing Methods

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Marginal Utility & Its Diminishing Methods International Journal of Tax Economics and Management Marginal Utility & its Diminishing Methods Luiz Carvalho Castro Department of Economic Sciences São Judas Tadeu University Email: [email protected] (Author of Correspondence) Antônio Souza Araujo Department of Economic Sciences São Judas Tadeu University Brazil Abstract In this article we have shown what is marginal utility in economics and its diminishing method mathematically. Marginal utility is an economic concept and very important to the theory of economic sciences. So we selected this topic to describe it with the concept of economics and mathematics elaborately. At the beginning of this article readers will find the definition of marginal utility and at the middle of this article, readers will find it's diminishing method mathematically. The term marginal utility has a good impact in economics. In economics, utility is the satisfaction or benefit derived by consuming a product; thus the marginal utility of a good or service is the change in the utility from an increase in the consumption of that good or service. Keywords: Marginal Utility; Diminishing Method; Marginality and Marxism; Theory of Marginal Utility. ISSN Online: 2618-1118 ISSN Print: 2618-110X 36 1. Introduction In the context of cardinal utility, economists sometimes speak of a law of diminishing marginal utility, meaning that the first unit of consumption of a good or service yields more utility than the second and subsequent units, with a continuing reduction for greater amounts. Therefore, the fall in marginal utility as consumption increases is known as diminishing marginal utility. 2. Marginality The term marginal refers to a small change, starting from some baseline level. As Philip Wicksteed explained the term, Marginal considerations are considerations which concern a slight increase or diminution of the stock of anything which we possess or are considering. Frequently the marginal change is assumed to start from the endowment, meaning the total resources available for consumption (see Budget constraint). This endowment is determined by many things including physical laws (which constrain how forms of energy and matter may be transformed), accidents of nature (which determine the presence of natural resources), and the outcomes of past decisions made by the individual himself or herself and by others. For reasons of tractability, it is often assumed in neoclassical analysis that goods and services are continuously divisible. Under this assumption, marginal concepts, including marginal utility, may be expressed in terms of differential calculus. Marginal utility can then be defined as the first derivative of total utility—the total satisfaction obtained from consumption of a good or service—with respect to the amount of consumption of that good or service. In practice the smallest relevant division may be quite large. Sometimes economic analysis concerns the marginal values associated with a change of one unit of a discrete good or service, such as a motor vehicle or a haircut. For a motor vehicle, the total number of motor vehicles produced is large enough for a continuous assumption to be reasonable: this may not be true for, say, an aircraft carrier. 3. Utility Depending on which theory of utility is used, the interpretation of marginal utility can be meaningful or not. Economists have commonly described utility as if it were quantifiable, that is, as if different levels of utility could be compared along a numerical scale. This has affected the development and reception of theories of marginal utility. Quantitative concepts of utility allow familiar arithmetic operations, and further assumptions of continuity and differentiability greatly increase tractability. Marginal Utility & its Diminishing Methods Contemporary mainstream economic theory frequently defers metaphysical questions, and merely notes or assumes that preference structures conforming to certain rules can be usefully proxied by associating goods, services, or their uses with quantities, and defines "utility" as such a quantification. Another conception is Benthamite philosophy, which equated usefulness with the production of pleasure and avoidance of pain, assumed subject to arithmetic operation. British economists, under the influence of this philosophy (especially by way of John Stuart Mill), viewed utility as "the feelings of pleasure and pain" and further as a "quantity of feeling". Though generally pursued outside of the mainstream methods, there are conceptions of utility that do not rely on quantification. For example, the Austrian school generally attributes value to the satisfaction of wants, and sometimes rejects even the possibility of quantification. It has been argued that the Austrian framework makes it possible to consider rational preferences that would otherwise be excluded. In any standard framework, the same object may have different marginal utilities for different people, reflecting different preferences or individual circumstances. 4. Diminishing Marginal Utility The concept in cardinal utility theory that marginal utilities diminish across the ranges relevant to decision- making is called the "law of diminishing marginal utility" (and is also known as Gosse n’s First Law). This refers to the increase in utility an individual gain from increasing their consumption of a particular good. "The law of diminishing marginal utility is at the heart of the explanation of numerous economic phenomena, including time preference and the value of goods ... The law says, first, that the marginal utility of each homogenous unit decreases as the supply of units’ increases (and vice versa); second, that the marginal utility of a larger-sized unit is greater than the marginal utility of a smaller-sized unit (and vice versa). The first law denotes the law of diminishing marginal utility; the second law denotes the law of increasing total utility." In modern economics, choice under conditions of certainty at a single point in time is modeled via ordinal utility, in which the numbers assigned to the utility of a particular circumstance of the individual have no meaning by themselves, but which of two alternative circumstances has higher utility is meaningful. With ordinal utility, a person's preferences have no unique marginal utility, and thus whether or not marginal utility is diminishing is not meaningful. In contrast, the concept of diminishing marginal utility is meaningful in the context of cardinal utility, which in modern economics is used in analyzing inter-temporal choice, choice under uncertainty, and social welfare. The law of diminishing marginal utility is similar to the law of diminishing returns which states that as the amount of one factor of production increases as all other factors of production are held the same, the marginal return (extra output gained by adding an extra unit) decreases. Copyright ©2019 | Seagull Publications 38 As the rate of commodity acquisition increases, marginal utility decreases. If commodity consumption continues to rise, marginal utility at some point may fall to zero, reaching maximum total utility. Further increase in consumption of units of commodities causes marginal utility to become negative; this signifies dissatisfaction. For example, Beyond some point, further doses of antibiotics would kill no pathogens at all, and might even become harmful to the body. To satiate thirst a person drinks water but beyond a point, consumption of more water might make the person vomit, hence leading to negative marginal and thus diminished total utility. It takes a certain amount of food energy to sustain a population, yet beyond a point, more calories cannot be consumed and are simply discarded (or cause disease). Diminishing marginal utility is traditionally a microeconomic concept and often holds for an individual, although the marginal utility of a good or service might be increasing as well. For example: I. bed sheets, which up to some number may only provide warmth, but after that point may be useful to allow one to effect an escape by being tied together into a rope; II. tickets, for travel or theatre, where a second ticket might allow one to take a date on an otherwise uninteresting outing; III. Dosages of antibiotics, where having too few pills would leave bacteria with greater resistance, but a full supply could effect a cure. IV. The third leg is more useful than the first two when building a chair. As suggested elsewhere in this article, occasionally one may come across a situation in which marginal utility increases even at a macroeconomic level. For example, the provision of a service may only be viable if it accessible to most or all of the population, and the marginal utility of a raw material required to provide such a service will increase at the "tipping point" at which this occurs. This is similar to the position with very large items such as aircraft carriers: the numbers of these items involved are so small that marginal utility is no longer a helpful concept, as there is merely a simple "yes" or "no" decision. 5. Marginality Theory Marginalize explains choice with the hypothesis that people decide whether to effect any given change based on the marginal utility of that change, with rival alternatives being chosen based upon which has the greatest marginal utility. Marginal Utility & its Diminishing Methods 6. Market Price and Diminishing Marginal Utility If an individual possesses a good or service whose marginal utility to him is less than that of some
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Utility, Ethics and Behavior
    Journal of Academic and Business Ethics Utility, ethics and behavior Marcela Parada-Contzen Universidad de Concepcion-Chile Jose R. Parada-Daza Universidad de Concepcion-Chile ABSTRACT This essay has the following hypothesis as its foundation: a new function taking a more global perspective can be developed based on the analytical economic conception of utility. However, this new hypothesis/perspective considers that individuals are driven to act by economic as well as social, religious, ethical, and other reasons. Thus, the crux of this exposition is an analysis of the concept of utility and its application towards daily acts. The essay also deals with the philosophical aspects of utility and its paradoxes and analyzes utility from the perspective of a biological being. This analysis is broader and includes the simultaneous actions of an economic human and a complex human. Keyword: Utility function, Emotional well-being, wealth, ethics, “homo economicus”, weights. Utility, ethics and behavior, Page 1 Journal of Academic and Business Ethics INTRODUCTION The study of what motivates individual acts, especially regarding economic decisions, offers an intellectual challenge for the human sciences. In economics, this matter has been studied using a methodology of normative analysis known as the utility function, in which people seek to obtain the maximum degree of satisfaction. Herein, utility is what each person obtains from a certain level of wealth or consumption. For those not instructed in economics, this idea creates distrust and is blamed for generating a society of individualistic and insatiable beings. Grounds for both supporting and distrusting this approach have been given. The utility function is an intellectual device for explaining personal economic behavior.
    [Show full text]
  • Utility and Happiness in a Prosperous Society
    Utility and Happiness in a Prosperous Society Yoram Kirsh1,2 1 Institute for Policy Analysis, The Open University of Israel 2 Department of Natural Sciences, The Open University of Israel Version: March 30, 2017 Keywords: Prosperous society, Utility, Happiness economics JEL Classification: D63, D64, I31 This article is scheduled to be a chapter in a book on the economics of the prosperous society. My claim is that there is a gap between economic theory and economic reality in the western world, since economics was traditionally established to deal with conditions of scarcity. As many of our current problems are associated with abundance rather than with scarcity, new tools are needed to tackle the modern dilemmas. For a definition of a prosperous society, please see the previous chapter (Unemployment and Job Creation in a Prosperous Economy). I would be grateful for any suggestion or comment. OUI – Institute for Policy Analysis Working paper series, No. 37 – 2017 * P AuthorPU contact details: ProfessorU (Emeritus) Yoram Kirsh, Department of Natural Sciences, The Open University of Israel, 1 University Rd., P.O.B. 808, Ra'anana 43107, Israel. Cell Phone:. 972-532-209726, For correspondence– yoramk2TU @openu.ac.il U2T 2 Abstract Some examples of human behavior which seem paradoxical or irrational in view of the utility maximization principle can be explained as rational if we distinguish between two types of utility. The first type is the conventional utility – cardinal or ordinal – which the rational economic actors are expected to maximize. The second type is connected to actions which fulfill some psychological needs and might appear irrational by cost- effective calculations.
    [Show full text]
  • Complementarity and Demand Theory: from the 1920S to the 1940S Jean-Sébastien Lenfant
    Complementarity and Demand Theory: From the 1920s to the 1940s Jean-Sébastien Lenfant To cite this version: Jean-Sébastien Lenfant. Complementarity and Demand Theory: From the 1920s to the 1940s. History of Political Economy, Duke University Press, 2006, 38 (Suppl 1), pp.48 - 85. 10.1215/00182702-2005- 017. hal-01771852 HAL Id: hal-01771852 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01771852 Submitted on 19 Apr 2018 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Complementarity and Demand Theory: From the 1920s to the 1940s Jean-Sébastien Lenfant The history of consumer demand is often presented as the history of the transformation of the simple Marshallian device into a powerful Hick- sian representation of demand. Once upon a time, it is said, the Marshal- lian “law of demand” encountered the principle of ordinalism and was progressively transformed by it into a beautiful theory of demand with all the attributes of modern science. The story may be recounted in many different ways, introducing small variants and a comparative complex- ity. And in a sense that story would certainly capture much of what hap- pened. But a scholar may also have legitimate reservations about it, because it takes for granted that all the protagonists agreed on the mean- ing of such a thing as ordinalism—and accordingly that they shared the same view as to what demand theory should be.
    [Show full text]
  • Download?Doi=10.1.1.467.8745&Rep=Rep1&Type=Pdf (Accessed on 7 April 2021)
    Journal of Risk and Financial Management Article The Standard Model of Rational Risky Decision-Making Kazem Falahati Glasgow School for Business and Society, Glasgow Caledonian University, 70 Cowcaddens Road, Glasgow G4 0BA, UK; [email protected]; Tel.: +44-141-331-3708 Abstract: Expected utility theory (EUT) is currently the standard framework which formally defines rational decision-making under risky conditions. EUT uses a theoretical device called von Neumann– Morgenstern utility function, where concepts of function and random variable are employed in their pre-set-theoretic senses. Any von Neumann–Morgenstern utility function thus derived is claimed to transform a non-degenerate random variable into its certainty equivalent. However, there can be no certainty equivalent for a non-degenerate random variable by the set-theoretic definition of a random variable, whilst the continuity axiom of EUT implies the existence of such a certainty equivalent. This paper also demonstrates that rational behaviour under utility theory is incompatible with scarcity of resources, making behaviour consistent with EUT irrational and justifying persistent external inconsistencies of EUT. A brief description of a new paradigm which can resolve the problems of the standard paradigm is presented. These include resolutions of such anomalies as instant endowment effect, asymmetric valuation of gains and losses, intransitivity of preferences, profit puzzle as well as the St. Petersburg paradox. Keywords: decision-making; rationality; risk; expected utility; behavioural puzzles MSC Codes: 62Cxx; 90B50; 91A26; 91B02; 91B06; 91B16; 91B30 Citation: Falahati, Kazem. 2021. The JEL Codes: C00; D01; D81 Standard Model of Rational Risky Decision-Making. Journal of Risk and Financial Management 14: 158.
    [Show full text]
  • The End of Economics, Or, Is
    THE END OF ECONOMICS, OR, IS UTILITARIANISM FINISHED? By John D. Mueller James Madison Program Fellow Fellow of The Lehrman Institute President, LBMC LLC Princeton University, 127 Corwin Hall, 15 April 2002 Summary. According to Lionel Robbins’ classic definition, “Economics is the science which studies human behavior as a relationship between ends and scarce means that have alternate uses.” Yet most modern economists assume that economic choice involves only the means and not to the ends of human action. The reason seems to be that most modern economists are ignorant of the history of their own discipline before Adam Smith or Jeremy Bentham. Leading economists like Gary Becker attempt to explain all human behavior, including love and hate, as a maximization of “utility.” But historically and logically, an adequate description of economic choice has always required both a ranking of persons as ends and a ranking of scarce goods as means. What is missing from modern economics is an adequate description of the ranking of persons as ends. This is reflected in the absence of a satisfactory microeconomic explanation (for example, within the household) as to how goods are distributed to their final users, and in an overemphasis at the political level on an “individualistic social welfare function,” by which policymakers are purported to add up the preferences of a society of selfish individuals and determine all distribution from the government downwards, as if the nation or the world were one large household. As this “hole” in economic theory is recognized, an army of “neo-scholastic” economists will find full employment for the first few decades of the 21st Century, busily rewriting the Utilitarian “economic approach to human behavior” that dominated the last three decades of the 20th Century.
    [Show full text]
  • Updating Rules for Non-Bayesian Preferences
    Updating Rules for Non-Bayesian Preferences. Tan Wang∗ December, 1999 Abstract We axiomatize updating rules for preferences that are not necessarily in the expected utility class. Two sets of results are presented. The first is the axiomatization and representation of conditional preferences. The second consists of the axiomatization of three updating rules: the traditional Bayesian rule, the Dempster-Shafer rule, and the generalized Bayesian rule. The last rule can be regarded as the updating rule for the multi-prior expected utility (Gilboa and Schmeidler (1989)). The operational merit of it is that it is equivalent to updating each prior by the traditional Bayesian rule. ∗Tan Wang is with the Faculty of Commerce and Business Administration, University of British Columbia, Van- couver, British Columbia, Canada, V6T 1Z2. [email protected]. The author is grateful to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for financial support. 1 Introduction The traditional approach to updating is the Bayesian rule. This approach is justified by the ax- iomatic treatment of Savage (1954), where it is shown that, in situations of uncertainty, if a decision maker’s preference satisfies a certain set of axioms, his preference can be represented by an expected utility with respect to a subjective probability measure and that probability measure represents the decision maker’s belief about the likelihood of events. Moreover, in light of new information, the decision maker updates his belief according the Bayesian rule. This Savage paradigm has been the foundation of much of the economic theories under uncertainty. At the same time, however, the Savage paradigm has been challenged by behavior exhibited in Ellsberg paradox (Ellsberg (1961)), which seems to question the very notion of representing a decision maker’s belief by a probability measure and hence by implication the validity of the Bayesian rule.
    [Show full text]
  • 1 Utility and Happiness Miles Kimball and Robert Willis1 University of Michigan October 30, 2006 Abstract: Psychologists Have D
    Utility and Happiness Miles Kimball and Robert Willis1 University of Michigan October 30, 2006 Abstract: Psychologists have developed effective survey methods of measuring how happy people feel at a given time. The relationship between how happy a person feels and utility is an unresolved question. Existing work in Economics either ignores happiness data or assumes that felt happiness is more or less the same thing as flow utility. The approach we propose in this paper steers a middle course between the two polar views that “happiness is irrelevant to Economics” and the view that “happiness is a sufficient statistic for utility.” We argue that felt happiness is not the same thing as flow utility, but that it does have a systematic relationship to utility. In particular, we propose that happiness is the sum of two components: (1) elation--or short-run happiness--which depends on recent news about lifetime utility and (2) baseline mood--or long-run happiness--which is a subutility function much like health, entertainment, or nutrition. In principle, all of the usual techniques of price theory apply to baseline mood, but the application of those techniques is complicated by the fact that many people may not know the true household production function for baseline mood. If this theory is on target, there are two reasons data on felt happiness is important for Economics. First, short-run happiness in response to news can give important information about preferences. Second, long-run happiness is important for economic welfare in the same way as other higher-order goods such as health, entertainment, or nutrition.
    [Show full text]
  • Economics 142: Choice Under Uncertainty (Or Certainty) Winter 2008 Vincent Crawford (With Very Large Debts to Matthew Rabin and Especially Botond Koszegi)
    Economics 142: Choice under Uncertainty (or Certainty) Winter 2008 Vincent Crawford (with very large debts to Matthew Rabin and especially Botond Koszegi) Background: Classical theory of choice under certainty Rational choice (complete, transitive, and continuous preferences) over certain outcomes and representation of preferences via maximization of an ordinal utility function of outcomes. The individual makes choices “as if” to maximize the utility function; utility maximization is just a compact, tractable way for us to describe the individual’s choices in various settings. We can view the utility function as a compact way of storing intuition about behavior from simple experiments or though-experiments and transporting it to new situations. The preferences represented can be anything—self-interested or not, increasing in intuitive directions (more income or consumption) or not—although there are strong conventions in mainstream economics about what they are normally defined over—own income or consumption rather than both own and others’, levels of final outcomes rather than changes. Thus if you think the mainstream approach is narrow or wrong-headed, it may make as much or more sense to complain about those conventions than about the idea of rationality per se. Background: Classical “expected utility” theory of choice under uncertainty This is the standard way to describe people’s preferences over uncertain outcomes. The Marschak reading on the reading list, linked on the course page, is a readable introduction. The basic idea is that
    [Show full text]
  • Correspondence Slutskii-Frisch, 1925-1936 Transcribed by Mag
    Correspondence Slutskii-Frisch, 1925-1936 Transcribed by Mag. Guido Rauscher (Vienna), May 2005 The (incomplete) collection of the correspondence between Ragnar Frisch (1895-1973) and Evgenii Evgenievich Slutskii (1880-1948) consists of 24 items, 11 letters from Slutskii, including the copy of a letter to George Udny Yule (1871-1951) and 13 letters from Frisch. It is deposited at the Department of Manuscripts (Håndskriftsamlingen) of The National Library of Norway (Nasjonalbiblioteket), Oslo. The help of Prof. Olav Bjerkholt, Oslo, in getting access to these materials is gratefully acknowledged. Insertions of the transcriber are enclosed in square brackets. Letter No.1 EES-RF [handwritten] 25.II.1925 Kiev, Nesterovskaja 17/8 Högädle herre! Edert särtryck ur Skandinavisk Aktuarietidskrift (Solution d'un problème du calcul des probabilités) har jag haft nöjet att emottaga vek är jag mycket tacksam för det sändningen. Högaktningsfullt E. Slutski [EES acknowledges receipt of the off-print of the paper Solution d'un problème du calcul des probabilités from Skandinavisk Aktuarietidskrift, Vol 7, 1924., pp.153 - 174 and thanks RF for the consignment.] Letter No.2 EES-RF [handwritten] 26.VI.1926 Sehr geehrter Herr Kollege! Wegen meiner Uebersiedelung aus Kiew nach Moskau ist ihr freundlicher Brief vom 24. April nur heute zu mir angekommen. Für Ihr liebenswürdiges Anerbieten mir ein Exemplar Ihrer Arbeit „Sur un problème d'économie pure“ zugehen zu lassen danke ich Ihnen bestens und sehe dieser Zusendung mit hochgespannten Interesse entgegen. Im Jahre 1915 ist in Giornale degle Economisti meine Arbeit “Sulla teoria del bilancio del consumatore” erschienen, wo ein Versuch gemacht wurde die Gleichgewichtsbedingungen der einzelnen Wirtschaft mit grösserer Strenge, als es bisher geschah, zu ergründen.
    [Show full text]
  • A Reconsideration of Full-Cost Pricing
    A Reconsideration of Full-Cost Pricing Methodological Aspects of Marginalism and Theoretical Explanations of Pricing Behaviour Inaugural-Dissertation zur Erlangung des Grades Doctor oeconomiae publicae (Dr. oec. publ.) an der Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München 2010 vorgelegt von Elmar Nubbemeyer Referent: Ekkehart Schlicht Korreferent: Kenneth Coutts Datum der mündlichen Prüfung: 8. November 2010 Promotionsabschlussberatung: 17. November 2010 Acknowledgements This thesis was written in the years 2007-2010 during my time as a research and teaching assistant at the Seminar für Theorie und Politik der Einkom- mensverteilung at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München and my stay at the University of Cambridge, UK. First and foremost, I would like to thank my supervisor Ekkehart Schlicht. His trust, universal support and strong interest in my research ideas were cru- cial for the success of this project. He always took time for my requests, in- spired me with countless suggestions and was a great mentor in matters both academic and not. Furthermore, I thank Ken Coutts, who invited me to a re- search visit at the University of Cambridge, UK and later agreed to act as my secondary supervisor. I am very grateful for his generous hospitality and his interest in my work. I also want to thank Florian Englmaier, who kindly agreed to act as my third examiner. Many friends and co-workers supported me in the course of this work. My dear colleagues and friends Roberto Cruccolini and Christoph Stoeckle helped me in many ways and contributed to a great working atmosphere. Maria Mor- genroth took care of all administrative tasks and often provided good advice.
    [Show full text]
  • Chapter # 2 the Essenceof Economics
    LIGHTHOUSE CPA SOCIAL SCIENCES DEPARTMENT AP ECONOMICS STUDY GUIDE # 2 - THE ESSENCE OF ECONOMICS - THE ART OF DECISION MAKING CHAPTER LEARNING OBJECTIVES 1. STUDENTS WILL BE ABLE TO EXPLAIN THE FIRST LAW OF ECONOMICS AND LIFE 2. STUDENTS WILL BE ABLE TO EXPLAIN THE CONCEPT OF OPPORTUNITY COSTS AND ILLUSTRATE AN EXAMPLE 3. IN ECONOMIC TERMS , STUDENTS WILL BE ABLE TO EXPLAIN THE CONCEPT OF “ THINKING AT THE MARGIN ” AND ILLUSTRATE AN EXAMPLE OF USING MARGINAL ANALYSIS 4. STUDENTS WILL BE ABLE TO IDENTIFY THE 3 BASIC FOCAL POINTS OF A COST BENEFIT ANALYSIS 5. STUDENTS WILL BE ABLE TO EXPLAIN AND ILLUSTRATE THE FOLLOWING LAWS AND PRINCIPLES : 1. MARGINAL PRODUCT OF LABOR NEEDS & WANTS 2. INCREASING MARGINAL RETURNS 3. DIMINISHING MARGINAL RETURNS 4. NEGATIVE MARGINAL RETURNS 5. DIVISION OF LABOR 6. SPECIALIZATION 7. HOW PROFIT IS DETERMINED ____________________________________________________________________________ DECISION MAKING STEP # 1 > WE NEED TO UNDERSTAND THE HIGHLY VALUED , AND SECRET FIRST LAW OF ECONOMICS AND LIFE : WHAT DOES THE WORD “ FREE ” MEAN ? ARE THERE ANY “ FREE ” GOODS ? WHAT IS THE FIRST LAW OF ECONOMICS AND LIFE ? WHAT ARE THE FOUR REASONS WHY YOU WANT TO HAVE A BETTER UNDERSTANDING ABOUT HOW TO MAKE DECISIONS ? 1. 2. 3. 4. DECISION MAKING STEP # 2 > WE NEED TO UNDERSTAND HOW TO EFFECTIVELY HANDLE “ TRADE OFFS ” : NEED WANT VALUE / COST 1 2 3 4 WHAT IS “ OPPORTUNITY COST ” ? EXAMPLE # 1 > ILLUSTRATES OPPORTUNITY COSTS > PENNY PICKUP PICKED UP NOT PICKED UP EXAMPLES # 2 AND 3 > ILLUSTRATES OPPORTUNITY COSTS > BODY
    [Show full text]
  • Imputation and Value in the Works of Menger, Böhm-Bawerk and Wieser
    E-LOGOS/2005 ISSN 1121-0442 _____________________________________________ Imputation and Value in the works of Menger, Böhm-Bawerk and Wieser Šimon Bi ľo University of Economics, Prague [email protected] Alford Fellow, The Ludwig von Mises Institute, July 21, 2004 Version January 10, 2005 1 Abstract: Analysis of the discussions within the first two generations of the Austrian school of economics constitutes an inevitable cornerstone of every further inquiry on the fields of the theory of value and imputation theory. Only with knowledge of Menger’s, Wieser’s and Böhm-Bawerk’s understanding of cardinalism and problems related with utility, value and their interdependence, we are apt to understand correctness or incorrectness of their positions and also positions of their followers. Thus, we could trace back cardinalist notions of utility seeded by Menger and understand later Mises’- Čuhel reformulation of the whole value theory into an ordinalistic one. Mises fully escaped the Mengerian tradition in this point and also transformed the whole theory of imputation into the theory of pricing of the factors of production. The only exception, from the point of view of imputation theory of highest importance, is his insistence on the value equation of means and ends that confused his successors and was investigated only recently. Within the context of present state of value and imputation theories, two related problems arise: “What constitutes theory of imputation, theory of value and valuation of the factors of production, today?” and “Is Menger-Böhm-Bawerkian solution of imputation theory really suitable for the explanation of the pricing process and isn’t Wieser’s objection of circularity of the imputation theory applied in price-creation justified?” These are the questions that are badly needed to be answered in order to clarify the theory in the field.
    [Show full text]